The Zodiac Challenge Tag

**A few weeks ago, I was tagged by Hannah at But First, Fiction in the Zodiac Challenge (thank you! 💕).**

I learned that she’s long overdue for a re-watch of The Emperor’s New Groove and The Princess and the Frog ~~(which, let’s be honest, we all are)~~. Also, she taught me that there’s a word for sidekick?!

𝓓𝓮𝓾𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓰𝓸𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓽 is a thing, everyone.

It’s hard for me to get behind zodiacs especially when, as a Virgo, I’m painted as perfectionist—something that’s only true about me in a limited number of cases. ᴡʜɪʟᴇ ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴀɴ ᴀsᴛʀᴏʟᴏɢʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴢᴏᴅɪᴀᴄ sᴋᴇᴘᴛɪᴄ, I am a Disney fanatic and will gladly take this opportunity to share Disneyish facts about me ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᵞᴼᵁ ᴾᴿᴼᴮᴬᴮᴸᵞ ᴰᴼᴺ’ᵀ ᴿᴱᴬᴸᴸᵞ ᶜᴬᴿᴱ ᶠᴼᴿ. So, let’s get started!

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Book Review: Sourdough by Robin Sloan // wtf did I just read

Title: Sourdough

Author: Robin Sloan

Published: September 5, 2017

Pages: 259

Genre: Fiction, Magical Realism, Contemporary

Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Goodreads

Goodreads Description: Lois Clary, a software engineer at a San Francisco robotics company, codes all day and collapses at night. When her favourite sandwich shop closes up, the owners leave her with the starter for their mouthwatering sourdough bread.
Lois becomes the unlikely hero tasked to care for it, bake with it and keep this needy colony of microorganisms alive. Soon she is baking loaves daily and taking them to the farmer’s market, where an exclusive close-knit club runs the show.
When Lois discovers another, more secret market, aiming to fuse food and technology, a whole other world opens up. But who are these people, exactly?

How do I even begin to write a review for this book?

The most basic and superficial description of this novel is that it is a book about baking bread. Your initial reaction to this statement might be to dismiss this book, and I get it—who wants to read a story about bread? Nonetheless, Sourdough won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction, a point that prevented me from disregarding the novel and ultimately made me decide to give it a shot.

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A Short Discussion on On the Come Up by Angie Thomas and Drug Addiction

**Angie Thomas’ new book On the Come Up tackled numerous issues scarcely addressed in young adult (YA) fiction.**

Drug abuse and recovery was one controversial problem the book touched upon. In my recent post, Why I Don’t Always Review A Book, I expressed that I tend to shy away from discussing books that cover topics that I feel like aren’t my place to input my views or that I’m not completely informed about. Addiction seemed like one of those topics I would usually steer away from. However, drug abuse—specifically rehabilitation—was the subject matter of my undergraduate research and is something that I feel very passionate about.

So, what exactly is the point of this post?

I wanted to relate my knowledge to the drug abuse element of On the Come Up to offer you all a different perspective on addiction and its treatment.

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Mini Book Reviews: 3 Female-Authored, YA Contemporaries

In celebration of March being Women’s History Month, I aimed to exclusively read female-authored books for the thirty-one days.

With the exception of one book, I made good on my goal and ended up having my best reading month this year. It’s really not much of a feat considering how busy I was in January and February and the complete disregard of my TBR pile that ensued. But, I’ll accept anything remotely close to win—it keeps me motivated 😅.

If you read my Women’s History Month Read-a-thon, you’ll know that the majority of the novels I read last month were young adult (YA) contemporaries. It wasn’t on purpose. ɪ ᴅɪᴅ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴀ ʙᴏᴏᴋ ʙʏ ᴏᴘʀᴀʜ. I think it just played out that way because I’m a giant mood reader, so I peruse the blogosphere when picking out my next reads. That results in me repeatedly reading YA since I mostly follow YA-oriented book blogs.

Don’t get me wrong though, there’s nothing wrong with YA. In fact, I made this conclusion after my read-a-thon:

There are so many brilliant women contributing their powerful thoughts for a more competent, diverse, and tolerant society—and there’s no place where it’s more apparent than YA bookshelves.

Groundbreaking.

Anyways, shall we get on with the mini reviews?

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My Women’s History Month Read-a-thon // five days of female-authored stories

Mission: read six female-authored stories in five days.

Why: Because, of course, I’ve fallen behind on my annual Goodreads Reading Challenge.

By how many books, you ask?

By six books 🤦‍♀️.

The TBR: We’re just going to wing it this time. I’m a self-proclaimed mood reader anyways.

Wish me luck 😬:

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Why I Don’t Always Review A Book

Is having a backlog of books to review the opposite of a TBR 🤔?

If you saw my recent post, /Modified/ Mini Book Reviews, you might remember that I’m REALLY behind on book reviews. In it, I quickly ticked off one reason (which I’ll re-enumerate in this post) for this setback. However, I know I can’t be the only book blogger with this problem and wanted to further investigate how this issue arose. So, here are some reasons I don’t always review a book:

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5 Spring Reads

It’s almost Spring!

Weather wise, it personally doesn’t feel like spring where I am. It’s hot, muggy, oppressive and the only “animals” giving birth in this heat are mosquitoes.

Is it obvious I’m in the tropics?

But seasons aren’t just defined by the change of weather they bring. Seasons can stir feelings and emotions in us—like how summer enacts idleness or winter intensifies our desire for affection. In the case of spring, this season offers us a clean canvas in which we feel like we can start afresh.

I’m ɢʀᴀᴅᴜᴀᴛɪɴɢ from university in a few weeks, so while the weather doesn’t align with the scientific definition of spring, my state of mind and wary eagerness for new beginnings is definitely clinging to the idea of spring.

For this *Top 5 Wednesday, I tried to choose books that inspired me to change in any way or taught me something that I was able to utilize to enhance some part of my life. In retrospect, it seems that self-help books and coming of age stories scream spring to me 🙂: Continue reading “5 Spring Reads” →

Book Review: What I Know for Sure by Oprah Winfrey // an inspiring book of life lessons

Title: What I Know for Sure

Author: Oprah Winfrey

Published: September 2, 2014

Pages: 228

Genre: Nonfiction, Self help

Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Goodreads

Who hasn’t heard of Oprah?

If you’re anything like me, you may know of Oprah’s billionaire status, book club, and long-running talk show in which she once famously gifted cars to everyone in her audience.

Annnnd… that’s about it.

Until recently finishing her book, What I Know for Sure, I had never consumed any content Oprah-related. Reading a book by Oprah definitely feels like something a put together, middle-aged adult would do, although that’s definitely not what I am 😅. I’m a lost, confused, and (frankly) quite scared young adult, so that’s probably the biggest reason I picked up the book.

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/Modified/ Mini Book Reviews // YA romances, contemporaries, sci-fi, and fantasy

**I’m really behind on book reviews.**

Recently, I was scrolling through my notes app on my phone, where I type any thoughts I have while reading a story, and saw that I have notes from books I read back at the beginning of 2018. This is why I should just review books right after reading them 🤦‍♀️.

Related: Why I Don’t Always Review A Book

I’ve put off reviewing the books for one reason or another, but it’s truly just come to the point where even if I did want to review them, I can’t because 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. Of course there are the notes I made, but many of them are incomplete and wouldn’t be enough for me to write up a thorough or even mini review.

Hence, my shoddy solution: /modified/ mini review *posts!

*There’s just too many books I never reviewed, so I have to split these up into multiple posts 😬.

Here, you can read my bullet point thoughts as they are in my notes and any quotes I saved while reading each book. In this way, I can finally share the backlog of ~~half-baked~~ thoughts I have on these books, and you can… read them 😅? I’m not sure how this will benefit you all, but hopefully by reading how these books affected me, you’ll get a glimpse as to how these books may resonate with you.

It’s a shoddy solution, but it’s my shoddy solution 😤.:

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My Favorite Books of 2018

Merry New Year!

Give me a moment to catch my breath.

I barely managed to finish my yearly reading goal of 50 books. I resorted to reading comics and short stories on the last few days of the year—which is fine—but also felt like I was cheating. Honestly, I blame the end-of-the-year reading hustle on the cluster-fudge that was my second semester of school ~~(shush mom, I don’t want to take responsibility)~~. Luckily, the frantic read-a-thons this year were not for naught, and I discovered some new favorites this year: Continue reading “My Favorite Books of 2018” →